Red Sox Sale Means End of Yawkey Era

Published 8:00 pm, Tuesday, February 26, 2002

Fenway Park, the curse of the Bambino, the joys and burdens of a sacred New England sports trust. In the hands of the Yawkey family and trust for seven decades, now all belong to John Henry.

Tom Yawkey, his wife Jean and their trustees made the Red Sox one of baseball's flagship franchises, but a franchise of futility. Twenty-eight managers, 14 Hall of Famers (including Yawkey himself) and nine GMs toiled under the Yawkey name without a World Series to show for it.

All the while, it was the last major league team to integrate and often the first to disintegrate in the heat of a pennant race or, in some of sports' classic collapses, on cool October nights with the championship just out of reach.

"It's a little bit sad, in a way, because we spent all of our careers in the Yawkey organization," said former Red Sox infielder and manager Johnny Pesky, who remains with the team 60 years later as an instructor. "Times have changed. So far, the new people seem like they're pretty good guys and that's good enough for me."

But Red Sox fans will want more from Henry, a Florida financier credited with rebuilding the Marlins after they were gutted following the 1997 World Series. His group, which includes former San Diego Padres owner Tom Werner, has promised changes in style and substance for a team that rarely failed to arouse the passions of its fans _ not always in a positive way.

Henry has promised a more open relationship with fans and the media, and to rebuild the team's farm system along the lines of that of the New York Yankees.

The new owners must also decide what to do about Fenway Park, the majors' smallest stadium. They have said they would like to renovate rather than rebuild, but it will take them six months to decide on a new version of the "lyric little bandbox" that has the highest ticket prices in the game.

Yawkey, a native of South Carolina who played baseball at Yale with more vigor than he studied, closed the deal on the Red Sox in 1933, on the day he turned 30 and gained control of his inheritance.

"We are out to give the Boston fans the best break in the world," he told reporters that day, according to Red Sox Century, a history of the team. "It will not change in a day, a month, or even a season, but we are going through to the end."

The team was in shambles, winning just 43 games in 1932 and drawing fewer than 200,000 fans. Yawkey began overpaying for mediocre talent and even then decried the state of Fenway Park. He soon had to deal with a personality clash between the manager and GM.

Yawkey hung around the clubhouse, buddying up to the team's great stars; his friendships with Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski lasted until the owner died in 1976. He passed the team to his wife, Jean, who died in 1992 after winning a legal battle with her former partners and putting comptroller John Harrington in charge.

As a close ally of commissioner Bud Selig, Harrington grew into one of baseball's most powerful owners. But he was less successful persuading local politicians to pitch in for the team's new ballpark.

In October 2000, Harrington put the trust's 53 percent stake up for sale under a complicated process designed to maximize the sale price. A year later, several bidders upped the stakes by offering to buy the other 47 percent of the team from the limited partners.

In the end, Henry paid $660 million plus the assumption of $40 million in debt for the Red Sox, their ballpark and 80 percent of the New England Sports Network. Never has anyone paid more in buying a baseball team, though losing bidders claimed they'd put more money on the table; Attorney General Tom Reilly called the deal a "bag job" but dropped his objection after the charities he was protecting got a bag of their own.